EFF vs. Facebook: Part 2: "Facebook's Connections"

It's akin to the lobster-in-a-boiling-pot scenario.

Put a lobster in already boiling water and it screams, stick it in room-temp water and heat to boiling and the lobster won't notice it's being cooked until it's too late...

I've started a status update campaign for all of my Facebook friends to educate themselves on these matters.

I'm leaving my college pictures up there because its not unheard of to be a drunk American college student, plus these years are behind me.

But my Facebook activity is now limited to keeping in touch with my friends by reading their content. Not the other way around.

Next thing we know our inboxes are public. We simply can't trust Mark anymore.

I've simply refused... seems to be a dark path they are going down if you're a user... but at the same time I find myself stuck with it as it's an important part of how I manage my life. They know that and that's why they keep screwing us.

I haven't been particularly concerned with the privacy implications. I tend to operate under the assumption that stuff I post online is public.

But this latest change has another implication: it decreases the ability for expression on my profile. For example, in the Favorite Music section, I had shared a favorite lyric. Now, I'm limited to just listing bands.

While I understand the monetization reasons for "normalizing" the profiles, ultimately it makes them less interesting. I want to read a free-form description of a friends activities. A normalized bullet-list is much less attractive.

Until now, my take on Facebook has been "I'm not too excited about the way they do things, but it's where I keep up with people who aren't engaged in other platforms." If future changes decrease the utility of the platform like this one does, that argument for staying won't hold much longer.

Like some others I assume that anything I put online is public information, but not everyone has this view. For the naive user a site like Facebook appears to be just about you and your small circle of friends. Especially for people who are younger and perhaps not so worldly it would be incredibly easy to post things on Facebook which you might come to regret a few years later - especially if future employers and insurance companies are trawling through your data and looking at your connections.

I don't think it's good enough for the folks at Facebook just to say "Privacy is dead. Get over it". In the real world those people who are not rampant exhibitionists do want and expect to have some level of privacy - some degree of control over what information they give to who. Ultimately it's about the dignity and integrity of the individual.

I can't help but wonder if this opens up a niche in the marketplace for a social networking site that actually does respect your privacy.

Most of these points are reasonable for Facebook. They're just saying that if you don't like the idea of the "connections," then don't share any information. At least you've been told that that information will be publicly visible, period. The fact that they keep your data even after you delete it from your profile isn't unreasonable either. Did you really think they would destroy all traces of your data just because you have removed it from your profile? I bet Google keeps your emails after you delete them.

The only thing that bothers me is point 6.

> Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you post to your wall. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection Page, without you even knowing it.

This is a little sneaky. I wouldn't have a problem if the connections were just behind the scenes (ie: not visible). Then it would be no different from Google checking for keywords in your emails so that they can target ads at you.

Is it possible to see someone's connections in a systematic way? (i.e. other than randomly appearing in the small box to the left of the connections page).

The only bit that holds a particularly serious concern to me is the global snippets bit which drags your wall posts out into the connections page - I've seen some random and utterly irrelevant messages appear there and that is worrying... (it would, perhaps, be better if they implemented the # tag style system similar to what they've done with @name now)

Sounds like advertisers are getting screwed too:

Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you post to your wall. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection Page, without you even knowing it. (For example, if you use the word "FBI" in a post).

Let's say you put "xbox" on your wall. Now you're connected to Xbox. Does an advertiser get the distinction between "this person has visited the xbox website and said they liked it (a good candidate to sell a video game) vs. this person just happened to type xbox on their wall (probably not as good of a candidate).